THE NINTH MAN
much as that? But this can't be! This can't be!" and he shoved out his two fat hands in front of him as if shoving something away from him, and then, half talking to himself and half to me: "Was it not enough that I should see the soul of her frozen in a night, and see the softness of her wither? And I must, too, see this? My poor Bartolommeo! A hard man he is and a strong man, but before God I swear he is not bad. It was to him only as if he had killed a whining dog. The black night's work it was. The black night's sowing! But not this harvest! You see, Matteo, she must not do this!"
In the hardness of my youth there was that in his complete discomposure that disgusted me. I plucked him by the sleeve and said to him in a tone of authority unbecoming in me to use to a priest of God: "Come, Father, who can tell who listens here?"
I led him down the long, deep flights of stairs and along the corridors to his own room, wondering into what hell I had now stepped, and frightened that life in my own house, where I served those whom I loved,
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